At last: Stephan Eicher. His fans have been longing for him to appear. Completely unplugged in the wonderful large Festival marquee, with unmistakable style-mix accents by Heinz Julen - the gifted artist, a Zermatter through and through and one of the founders of the Unplugged Festival. He had meticulously placed firewood on the stage, laid out sheepskins on the first rows of chairs and from the ceiling of the marquee dangled his immense neobaroque steel lamps up to which Stephan Eicher's gaze continually strayed.
Je n'ai pas d'ami comme toi went the rocker's first song - nor do we, would the public have loved to reply. It was really heartwarming for all who understand the Swiss German tongue, when Eicher, who grew up in Münchenbuchsee, Bern, began to speak "Berndeutsch", the Bernese dialect. For instance, his "ungloubliche" (unnamable) Reyn Ouwehand played on the piano with his really unbelievable virtuosity, was in a class of its own - and above all, of course, when he struck up with songs from his home region. And what was so amazing: even the numerous French-speakers present joined in such numbers as Campari Soda, Hemmige, S'isch äbe ne Mönsch uf Ärde. Eicher is a super-star in France and he recently moved to the French capital. At his concerts in the "Olympia" in Paris, where he constantly plays to a full house, the public literally sing with him, and the French press let it be known that - "may the words not stick in his throat."
The public were reluctant to allow Eicher to go, the polyglot with solid Swiss roots and the gypsy soul, and then only after his second, hot rendering of "Déjeuner en paix". Luckily there was another "local" in the Vernissage, the fantastic Heidi Happi, aka Priska Zemp, the singer from Dagmarsellen in rural Lucerne. Since her music studies in Amsterdam, this 30-year-old has long had best connections, both musically and as a woman of the world. But she still plays ironically jokingly with her origins - last night she was wearing a red frilly blouse with 1980s-style black pleated trousers, as if her motto were, "Little country pumpkin go out into the great, wide (Zermatt glacier) world and doll yourself up". Here too, what a performance. Singer-song-writer Heidi Happy, together with Ephrem Lüchinger and various instruments played with great skill by both of them, understood how to lead the audience sensitively and subtly into her world. A world which is sometimes anything but happy. That is certainly the reason why the audience was so deeply touched.
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